So, I just received the coins I submitted to NGC about 5/6 weeks ago. There are 16 coins total. I've divided them into three stacks. I'm guessing the TPG veterans will be able to guess the category of each stack immediately. Hint, the middle stack is 3 deep, and I'm not super enthusiastic about the results.

I can see why you would guess this, but that's actually way off base. About a decade ago, I was sidelined by herniated discs in my lower back, and I got back to my boyhood hobby of coin collecting. I bought a ton of silver lots on ebay, shooting for roughly spot prices, with some premiums for older coins such as barbers, Seated coins, capped bust, etc. I never bid on an individual coin (that I can recall) except one auction where I bid about $1000 - $1200 for a 1799 Silver Dollar. Well, not entirely accurate, because I also bought a 1915 Austrian Gold coin for roughly $600, but that was near spot.I did really well at the time, but I was also buying as silver prices were increasing, and by the end of this buying period, I recall that silver was pushing $25-$30/oz. But, I actually got some really great coins during this time, and I really enjoyed the variety. I even accumulated a number of slabbed coins, but never cared much for the slabs. Once my back improved, I returned to my other hobbies and these coins sat in a closet for many years. Now, again, back problems ensue, coin collecting keeps me occupied. I have realized that the best coins I own have appreciated in the past decade, and the ones that are driven more by precious metal value have decreased or stagnated. So, my new focus is to rid myself of all of this "hoard" and replace it with more numismatically value-oriented coins (if that makes sense).To that end, I tried to identify the best coins I accumulated (and are not tied to spot pricing i.e gold coin), and get them graded.

Quote:So, @jadey, if I dare ask you this question, was it worth the cost to have that lot slabbed by a TPG?

That's clearly a subjective question, but in general, yes. I have decided to enter the realm of collecting higher quality coins, and I think part of that process is to come to terms with the fact that you will be using TPG's. I've never really been a fan, but I think it would be swimming upstream to resist that.

However, if I had discovered this site earlier, I would have saved some money. One of the bagged coins is a Capped Bust half that was probably polished or whizzed (still not quite sure what that means yet), but I submitted it knowing that it was probably cleaned. A bunch of other of the same variety I did not submit, because I knew they were cleaned, but in a different way.

The other two bagged coins were "not genuine", and a simple weighing would have identified that. I can't really understand why I didn't do that prior to submitting, because I did that on a couple of other counterfeits. For whatever reason, I didn't find these coins suspicious, even though they were pretty high value ($700/each). Oh well, lesson learned I hope.

A couple of the details coins surprised me, and a number did not, and I thought it was worth the process to establish that they are genuine. One details coin came back scratched, and I could not find out why. It took me literally 2 minutes to find the scratch, but when tilted at just the right angle, it popped out at me. Oddly enough, I took a picture of the coin in low light, and the scratch just jumped right out.

One common Morgan 1889 dollar that I submitted was because I had a roll of 20 uncirculated. I sent in a representative sample to try and determine roughly where to grade them. I could have done that here.

Finally, the 1799 dollar that I paid good money for came back genuine at VF 30. That was my primary concern.

So, I would do it differently, and more intelligently knowing what I know now after joining this community, but I would still submit at least half of those coins to a TPG.

Quote:So did you lose money overall by paying for the grading? Or was it a winner b/c of the one coin?

I definitely lost money by paying for grading, but there is peace of mind confirming that the primary coin is genuine. I think the slab also supports the value of the coins that were straight graded. Not sure about the others. As much as I don't like the bagged coins, I'm glad I know that two are counterfeit, even though I could have easily figured that out myself.

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